The Big Meow

“But we’re the answer, aren’t we?” Arhu said, vanishing the papers into an otherspace pocket. “Iau and the Powers wouldn’t have sent us back here if we weren’t supposed to fix this. If we didn’t have at least a chance.”

Rhiow waved her tail in quiet agreement. “That’s how Urruah and I are seeing it at the moment,” she said.

Arhu hissed as Rhiow had: a small personal sound of frustration and nervousness. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “But I hate this.” His eyes met hers again. “Is it wrong to hate this?”

Rhiow sighed. “Not at all, my kit,” she said. “As long as while we hate it, we just keep on doing what we have to.”

She headed for the doors, trying to look calm for him, and Arhu followed.

*

The museum was surprisingly beautiful for something buried so deep in the heart of a busy ehhif city, and both the building and its surroundings had a spaciousness and grace about them that Rhiow found it possibly to enjoy even in these unnerving circumstances. Down in this part of the city, well away from the hills, there was still some mist clinging in the wake of dawn — though it seemed unlikely to Rhiow that this would last long. From the mist rose a building that featured a big central dome between two smaller ones, and an arched and pillared porch that looked down into the aisles and graveled paths of the huge surrounding rose gardens. The mist softened the traffic noises drifting in from all sides as the surrounding city surged to life in the brightening morning.

They all sidled before they made their way through the mist and up the steps of the front entrance. “The place doesn’t open for a few hours yet,” Hwaith said. “It should be nice and quiet for us.”

They spoke the Mason’s Word and passed through the bronze-bound doors under the porch, into the huge airy space under the rotunda of the central dome. Had there been any sound, it would have echoed: but the silence here was total, the outside traffic sounds sealed completely away.

Rhiow and Urruah and Arhu paused there on the shining marble floor while Hwaith got his bearings. “Right,” he said. “The last time I was here, all the Mesoamerican stuff was one floor up. The stairs are over here –“

He led them over to the right, where a stairway came down between the lesser right-hand dome and the main one and switched back to follow the circle of the building up and around to the level over the front entrance. There they passed through an arch in the outer wall into a long hall that ran along the front of the building.

Inside it was an unbroken stretch of glass cases on the dome side, and more cases between the windows that looked down on the main entrance. To Rhiow, the sense of profound age that suddenly descended on her as she glanced around was astonishing. It’s strange, she thought, that I don’t get this feeling when we have reason to go to the museums in the City in our hometime. But possibly I’m just getting jaded about those, having seen them so often.

Or maybe it was just the difference in the kinds of things that were here, the more intimate scale of the displays — not the massive statuary of ehhif tombs and effigies, and their bulky-graceful take on the way People saw the Powers that Be, but instead a lavish collection of the things ancient ehhif in a very different part of the world had used in their day to day lives in this part of the world. There were incense burners and effigies of ehhif and beasts, and all kinds of pots and ceramic baskets and three-or four-footed drinking and eating vessels, some of them in animal shapes or looking like human heads. There was delicate jewelry of silver and turquoise and carved translucent shell, and massive pieces – necklets and gold-bound collars in carved jade and polished stone. There were rows and rows of small round-featured ehhif figures made of clay or other baked ceramics, some simply dressed and some ornately; some still painted after centuries, some worn down by time to the red-brown of the original clay. And off to one side stood a great wall of glass, behind which, on many shelves, stood row after row of tablets that had once been square or rectangular or round, but were now well worn by time into less regular shapes.

“This is it!” Arhu said, sounding excited. “I can feel it. This is where the original rubbings came from – “ He started down the long wall of glass, pausing to look carefully at each group of tablets.